And through the gore and smoke moved the scavenging dark shapes of rats and hulking awkward birds, picking at the pieces with macabre ravenous delight.
The bookstore was hemmed in on either side by other buildings. Cutter turned his head and looked towards either end of the street. Cars were crumpled ruined shapes across all three lanes of the blacktop. He saw sedans and SUV’s flipped onto their sides. He saw other vehicles burned out. He saw cars with their doors open and others with their windows shattered, left skewed across the road during the last frantic moments before the world had been plunged into chaos.
He followed the road with his eyes towards the intersection – maybe sixty yards away – and through the smoke he saw the dark shadowed shapes of a couple of SUV’s. The vehicles had been stopped at the traffic lights when the helicopters had appeared overhead, and the teeming mass of undead had stormed along the street.
He turned to the women and pointed. “We’re going to head towards the traffic lights,” he explained in a hush. “There’s no way we’ll get one of these closer cars through the wreckage. But if we can find a car close to the lights, we’ll have a good chance of being able to shoulder our way through to open road. Then we’ll head east and get as far out of the city as possible.”
Cutter knew it wouldn’t be as easy as he said. Between them and the safety of the city’s outlying suburbs was a dozen arterial roads, and each of them would be jammed with the same choking chaos. But he plowed on, forcing the faintest hint of hope into his voice and noticing how the women responded, as though optimism was infectious. “Once we’re out on the street, we go hard,” he said. “Don’t stop for anything. Just get to one of the cars and get the engine running.”
He grabbed Glenda’s shoulder. “You’re in the lead,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you. If you see anything or anyone, shoot to kill. Don’t think. Don’t hesitate. Aim for the head and put them down. Understand?”
Glenda nodded. She swallowed hard – a convulsive nervous reaction – and then clenched her jaw grimly.
The clock in Cutter’s head was ticking. He figured they had been in the bookstore for ten minutes. He knew he had no more time for caution. “We go on three,” he said. He saw the women jostling and preparing themselves, getting up onto their haunches and bracing themselves.
“One.”
Glenda hefted the AR-15 and got slowly to her feet. She settled the weapon into her shoulder and curled her finger around the trigger. Made sure the safety was off and ready to fire.
“Two.”
The rest of the women got to their feet, huddled in a tight knot. Their faces were racked with fear and tension. Cutter took a final glance along the street. The smoke from the burning dress shop was hanging low across the road in a black boiling haze. But through it, he thought he saw a sudden flicker of movement. He felt a dark lurch of icy fear…
“Three!” Glenda said with a sudden loud impulsive shout. She flung herself over the trolley, landing on her feet and slamming her shoulder against the frame of the doorway. She swept the weapon in a quick arc, and then started to run, the gun jumping and jostling as she tried to keep it steady. Behind her the other women were moving, more reluctantly, their steps hesitant, but swept up in the instant that fear and terror were forced down deep enough to drive them forward. Cutter cried out a warning. He leaped to his feet and thrust the Glock out in front of him. He narrowed his eyes, his panic rising as he tried to look past the fleeing figures of the women.
He was sure he had seen something.
He felt a sudden sickening slide in his guts – but by then it was too late for anything other than running… and praying.
* * *
The nearest SUV was a cherry red Dodge Durango, left abandoned a couple of rows back from the intersection lights. Cutter ran towards it with his arms pumping and with fear clutching icy tight around his chest as though the hounds from Hell were on his heels.
But they weren’t.
They were coming from a bank on the corner of the block – a dozen undead ghouls who had been drawn to the heavy sound of running footsteps, and suddenly came shambling into the bright daylight at an angle to intercept Cutter and the women.
Glenda saw them at the same instant as Cutter. They were still thirty yards from the Durango when she went down onto one knee and raised the AR-15 to her shoulder. The other women ran past, gasping and crying out in fear. Glenda fired half-a-dozen rounds, and three of the undead fell to the ground. One of them didn’t get up.
She fired again, taking careful aim at a woman who was moving faster than the others, her face twisted into a terrifying demented howl of outrage. The left side of her face had been torn away and flaps of livid flesh hung from her cheek bone. One of her eyes was dangling from its socket, swinging like a pendulum as she lurched forward. When the bullets smashed into her, the ghoul stayed on its feet, staggering in a circle and thrashing at the air with its bloody hands. The bullets slapped loudly into lifeless flesh, so that she jerked and juddered. Then Glenda fired another round that caught the woman in the forehead. She went over backwards – her head snapped back by the vicious impact of the bullet – and lay dead on the warm blacktop.
Cutter ran past Glenda towards the Durango. The girl with the mousy brown hair was tugging desperately at the rear passenger door handle. She turned to Cutter and her eyes were huge and filled with terror. “There’s a body in the back!” she screamed.
Cutter slammed into the back of the vehicle and saw the reflection of an undead shamble fill the vehicle’s rear window. He turned and fired instinctively, a cry of shock loud in his throat.
The zombie was close. It was a man in a business suit, its face streaked with blood. Its mouth was open, roaring and gnashing. It was close enough for Cutter to see the broken bloody stumps of its teeth and smell the rank fetid stench of its breath.
He felt the gun kick in his hand as the sound of the shot echoed loud in his ears. The zombie was just a few feet away. Cutter’s shot tore the back of the ghoul’s head off.
He turned back to the woman at the car door. “What?”
“There’s a man, hunched over in the back seat!” she cried, on the edge of hysteria. She flung the door open – and at the same instant the body on the back seat began to move, rising and turning towards her. The ghoul had once been a young man. Now he was a hideously disfigured nightmare, risen from the dead. He was wearing a t-shirt that had been ripped to shreds. It hung from his frame in tatters, exposing dreadful gaping holes in his chest. His face was awash with fresh blood, and black tufts of fur clung to its chin. The zombie’s eyes flashed red with evil rage. It clawed at the woman, its hooked fingers snagging in the front of her blouse, ripping buttons and tugging her into the vehicle. On the seat beside the zombie was the mutilated carcass of a rat. The rodent’s throat had been ripped open and its blood spilled across the soft padded seat.
The woman shrieked. The ghoul pulled her off balance and she was heaved head-first into the SUV. Cutter saw her legs kick wildly and he reached out for her. One of her shoes fell off and then suddenly the interior of the Durango was filled with a bright red eruption of arterial blood. It sprayed across the windows and coated the interior with the sticky cloying stench of sudden death. Cutter saw the woman’s body gripped in a sudden seizure, and then the life went out of her.
He reeled away. Jillian and the other woman were running towards the next SUV. Cutter went back behind the Durango and grabbed Glenda’s shoulder with a grip that was fierce with his own terror.
“Come on!” he shouted. Glenda was still firing. Two more of the ghouls lay dead on the ground, but the rest were shambling closer like a relentless tide of hideous death. Over her shoulder, driven into moaning madness by the loud percussive sound of the AR-15, more of the undead were appearing on the sidewalk, closing in from both sides of the street.
Cutter raised the Glock at one of the ghouls behind them. It was a young girl, maybe just into her teens. She had long blonde
hair that was stringy with dirt and gore. She was wearing a long dress, so that it looked to Cutter as though she was gliding across the ground. She was coming on slowly, her head tilted at an impossible angle so that her cheek touched her shoulder, and her eyes were vacant and mindless. She was about twenty feet away. Cutter lined up for the head shot, but his hands were shaking. He felt the gun waver, and he knew that if he fired he would waste a precious round. He spun away.
“Come on!” he dragged Glenda to her feet. “Run!”
Jillian and the other woman were already at the next SUV, scrambling around the hood and tugging at the driver’s side doors. It was an old blue Subaru Forester. Cutter pushed Glenda ahead of him and turned in a quick circle.
The zombie girl was still the closest threat, shambling towards them slowly, but others were coming more quickly from behind her, and from other nearby buildings. The ghouls that had surged from the bank on the corner were a more pressing threat. Their numbers were swelling.
He turned and ran.
Glenda had reached the SUV. She had the AR-15 propped on the roof of the Forester, resting the barrel on one of the vehicle’s roof racks. She fired three quick shots at one of the ghouls swarming towards them. It was a figure wearing shredded army fatigues and a helmet. The man’s face was emaciated, as though the blood had been sucked from his body, leaving the tatters of its skin shriveled and dry as parchment. The man’s nose was missing and its lips had been gnarled away so that its gums were exposed and its teeth were bared in a moaning, howling rictus.
Glenda put a round into the empty, darkened socket that had once been his eye, and the ghoul was flung backwards, its helmet spinning from its exploded head in a high lazy arc.
“I’m out!” Glenda shouted. She shouldered the semi-automatic and spun Jillian around. She thrust her hand into the black nylon bag and felt for a fresh magazine.
The last woman in the group was about the same age as Glenda. Maybe twenty-five. Maybe a little older. She had short black hair and a pretty face, perched on a long graceful neck. She flung open the Forester’s passenger door and scrambled into the vehicle. Slammed her fist down on the door lock, and then turned in her seat to lock the door behind where she sat. She was crying out in fear and panic, screaming to Cutter and the others to hurry. One of the ghouls broke from the group and slammed its bloody mangled hands against the glass of the window. Inside the Forester, the sound was like a sudden explosion. The woman flinched away and covered her face.
Cutter raised the Glock and fired. His first shot missed. He fired again, reaching across the roof of the Forester until the pistol was just inches away from the monster’s ravaged face. The bullet went through its brain and it fell slowly to the ground, dragging its clawing hands down the side of the car with a sound like fingernails on a blackboard.
Glenda had reloaded the AR-15. Cutter saw the empty magazine clatter to the ground at her feet. Then she had the weapon up to her shoulder and was firing again with deadly, controlled shots at a range so close it was impossible for her to miss.
Jillian threw herself in behind the wheel of the Forester. The keys were still jangling in the ignition. She pumped the gas pedal with her foot and then fired up the motor. The engine coughed, whirred – and then died. Jillian punched the steering wheel in desperate panic. She tried again – and this time the Forester burst into growling life, the engine revving madly, and the air around the car hazing with exhaust fumes.
She leaned out of the door and screamed at Glenda and Cutter.
“Get in!” she shouted. The Forester’s engine was howling, revving hard. Glenda fired four more shots, and then pulled open the rear door. She turned to Cutter. “I’ll cover you. Get in!”
Cutter shook his head. “You get in!” he said, his voice loud in the sudden silence.
Cutter didn’t wait. He fired two more shots at ghouls, then spun around and snapped off a shot at the undead teenage girl. She went down in a tangled heap, and rolled towards the gutter.
Glenda threw herself in through the open door of the Forester. She scrambled across the seat and smashed the passenger-side window with the butt of the rifle. The glass shattered into a thousand tiny diamonds and sprayed across the road. She thrust the barrel through the opening and fired two more shots. The ghouls were just a few feet away. The sound of their moans grew louder until it became an endless undulating wail. The fetid stench of their bodies hung in the air.
“Come on!” It was Jillian. She slammed the driver’s door shut and gunned the engine again. Slipped the transmission into drive and stomped her foot on the brake to hold the car.
But Cutter wasn’t listening.
Near where the zombie girl lay, was an apartment block. It was an old three-story building with an elegant old world façade and heavy glass entry doors. From one of the top floor windows, Cutter suddenly saw a movement and his eyes flicked to it, expecting fresh danger.
It was a white bath towel.
There was a fresh-faced teenage boy wearing a bulky padded jacket and a baseball cap. He was holding the towel out of the open window, the fabric rippling and undulating gently in the breeze. Written in large hasty lettering was the message ‘We are Alive!’ and then next to it was the sign of the cross.
Cutter stared.
Beside the teenage boy, another figure suddenly appeared, framed against the darkened window. It was a middle-aged man. He was balding. He had a red fleshy face, and he was wearing some kind of a dark coat. The man cried out to Cutter.
“In God’s name, please help us!”
Cutter paused. Time seemed to stand still. He turned back to the Forester. The open door was right beside him. The women were in the car. Glenda was firing again as the wave of ghouls pressed closer like a suffocating wall of death. Escape was right there – waiting for him. He had done it. He had led the women out onto the horror-filled road and they had made it to a vehicle. He had survived.
He glanced beyond the roof of the Forester. Time was up. The ghouls were at the passenger-side doors. He could see Glenda firing, and the undead were so close that the shaft of gun flame joined the muzzle of the AR-15 and a zombie’s head, hurling it backwards like a bundle of rags to the ground.
Cutter decided.
He slammed the door shut and punched on the roof of the Forester. Jillian’s face twisted towards him, pressed against the glass, her mouth open in terror.
“Go!” Cutter shouted. “Head for the suburbs!”
Jillian’s eyes became enormous. She was shouting at him, but Cutter wasn’t listening. Then he felt something crash against his waist and he reeled in sudden fright. It was Glenda. She was shoving at the rear door with her feet, trying to kick it back open. She was shouting to him in fear and desperation. Cutter turned and bent at the waist. He shook his head. Glenda stared at him aghast. She was crying. He could see the anguish and tormented terror in her eyes.
Cutter nodded slowly. “It’s okay,” he said, mouthing the words because he knew she couldn’t hear him above the wail of the ghouls. “It’s okay. This is what I want.”
Then he smiled.
Glenda slumped back against the seat, cold with shock – numb and staring vacantly. Then Jillian took her foot off the brake and the Forester roared away from the clamoring clawing hands of the zombies, lurching dangerously at the intersection and then turning right towards open road in a blue cloud of smoke and burning rubber.
Cutter turned away from the ghouls.
And ran.
* * *
The heavy glass entry doors to the apartment block were twenty feet away. Cutter leaped over the body of the dead zombie girl and slammed his fists against them. They didn’t budge. The glass was darkly tinted and he pressed his face against it. The doors had been barricaded with jumbled furniture.
He turned and glanced over his shoulder. The ghouls were swarming across the street, and more were shambling along the sidewalk towards him, teetering and unsteady, but remorseless. He stepped back towards the gutt
er and looked up urgently.
“The fire escape!” that man in the dark coat was shouting down at him, crying out, his voice hoarse. Cutter looked left. There was a narrow alleyway beside the building, choked with large steel dumpsters filled with rotting trash. “Down the alley!” the man flailed his arms.
Cutter clenched his jaw and tucked the pistol down the front of his jeans. The figure of a ghoul appeared suddenly to his right. It was a woman. In life she might have been quite beautiful. In death she was a shrieking, howling nightmare. She was wearing a blouse and skirt, and as she drew within just a few feet of where Cutter stood, her body began to writhe and undulate. Her arms came up, her fingers splayed into claws, and her eyes snapped wide and red through long brown tangles of hair that hung down over her face. The woman had been bitten on her shoulders and arms. Cutter could see the horrendous savagery of the wounds, still oozing in thick brown gore. Around each gash, her skin was covered with angry puss-filled sores. The woman took a shambling step closer and then suddenly vomited bloody gore that heaved from somewhere deep within her guts and gushed down over her chin and throat.
Cutter shifted so that his weight was on his right foot, ready to kick out. The ghoul pressed forward. Cutter waited, knowing he had only seconds to spare. All around him the undead closed in, reaching for him, howling and hissing at him. He glanced past the undead woman’s shape and guessed it was fifteen feet to the alleyway. He could still make it.
And then suddenly he felt an icy claw wrap around his ankle. He looked down in horror. The zombie girl stared up at him, its lips drawn back in an inhuman wail of triumph and its tongue flicking hungrily, as though already anticipating the taste of him. Cutter could see the lethal malevolence in the zombie’s eyes, and he felt himself shudder. The girl was leaking brown gore from the side of her face where Cutter’s bullet had ripped away part of her cheek. Suddenly the air exploded with the sound of the undead girl’s triumphant scream.
Ground Zero: A Zombie Apocalypse Page 8
